Out of Africa: Prayer for the Fatherless

Psalms 10:17-18 (ESV)

¹⁷ O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear ¹⁸ to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

There are no good stories behind how one becomes an orphan.  However, there is something extra repulsive when a child becomes an orphan by the hand of man’s hate.

This is the story throughout Liberia and in particular in the Fairfield Baptist Mission orphanage in Liberia.  Every child in this orphanage is a war orphan.  This was a war of hate which is often the root of most wars.  However, as I listened to the people talk about the war, it was clear that in this war, there was no side on the side of justice.

Prince

My third night at the orphanage (still on my own) I hung out on the back porch with the teenage boys.  One of them had a cell phone.  Cell phones are abundant in Liberia.  One may not have bread on the table but still have a cell phone.  Nobody was making any calls.  My guess is that there are rarely any minutes available on this phone.  We were all sitting around listening to the musical ring tones like you might expect to see a bunch of teenagers doing in the US sitting around a boom box.

They were laughing, singing, dancing and making fun of each other like teenage boys do.  I decided that I would share some American music with them so I pulled out my iPod and let them listen to Toby Mac.  I did not have speakers so the boys took turns listening on the headphones.  Toby Mac was a big hit.  However, the bigger hit was the pictures on my iPod.

As we huddled around sharing the headphones, we browsed through my family pictures.  These boys were all excited to see pictures of my kids and my wife.  There was not a sense of sadness of seeing pictures of a family they did not have.  I sensed more a presence of hope.  A hope that there was a world beyond the orphanage where there were moms and dads and families.

A young man named Prince told me that he did not have a mom and dad.  He told me that the president killed them both.  I knew he meant in the war of hate, the government soldiers killed his parents.  I have no idea why, but why does not matter when a 10-year old boy has his parents killed by his government.

Prince is 15 now and has been without a mom or dad for 5 years.  He told me that night, that now I was his dad since he did not have one.  I was his dad, why?  Because I had shared some music and pictures?  No, because I was there which meant to him, I must care.

Prince did not ask to come home with me.  He only asked me for some flip flops.  His had busted.  There is a real sense of needs versus wants when you visit a country buried in poverty.  “I have an American visiting and he wants to know what he can do for me.  I’ll ask for my hearts desire, a new pair of flip flops.”  Is that the request I would get from a typical teenage boy in America?

Moses

Moses was with us as we looked at the pictures.  Being the celebrity that had actually been to America, he started to tell the other boys how great America was and how bad Liberia was.  This did not go over well with Maude and she rightly admonished him that he should not talk that way about his country, a country she has chosen to stay in to care for children like himself.

Moses does not like to be corrected (do you know any other thirteen year olds like that?).  His emotions that he had been keeping in came out.  He wept in the midst of his friends for most of the rest of the night.  It was heart wrenching.

The good news is that the next day we had a successful visit with a lawyer in Monrovia.  There is a Liberian family in our church in Cypress that wants to adopt Moses.  This lawyer was fairly confident that he would be able to get the paperwork through a system that had been bogged down to this point as Liberia investigates child trafficking problems.

One of the reasons he was confident in our success was the legitimacy earned by bringing Moses back when his medical visa expired.  While Moses does not understand why we had to take him back (he asked my why I did not just call the President and explain his situation) it pays to honor God by following the laws of the land.

Pastor Anthony and I correspond each week.  He says he is praying with Moses and helping Moses to understand and learn patience waiting on God.  This is a hard lesson for us grown-ups.  It has to seem like an impossible task to a 13-year old boy.

Princess

We met Princess my last day at the orphanage.  We were eating with the kids in their lunch hall (a dark mud-brick building with two long tables for 70 kids).  A 9-year old girl came over to Pastor Bill.  Unlike all of the other children here, Princess was not wearing a smile.  As soon as she came over, Pastor Bill began to cry (I can’t even write this without tears).  He explained to us that she had seen rebel soldiers kill her parents.  In fact, she witnessed a rebel soldier slice her dad’s throat from behind.  Princess was 4 at the time.

The boys and girls in this orphanage are well fed thanks to Christian Aid.  However, Christian Aid can only supply food for 50 children as Liberian law only allows 50 orphans per orphanage.  There are 75 orphans being cared for by the Fairfield Baptist Mission in Liberia.  Nonetheless, all the children are fed.

The needs are great.  At one level, the needs seem too great and too overwhelming.  However, when you ask the children what they need the answers are simple.  A matchbox car, a baby doll, but really a request that someone knows they exist.  I can’t tell you how many of these kids wanted to make sure I knew their name and wanted to know my name, my wife’s name and my children’s names.  They want to be connected.

Our church is working with an organization called BrightPoint to do just that.  Our goal is to match up every child in the orphanage with a family sponsor in our church.  A family that they can call their own.  A family that will know their name, pray for them and write them.  They want a mom and dad because “man who is of the earth” stole theirs .  We hope that together with Bright Point, God can use us to bring them that desire of their heart.

If you or your church want to get involved and reach out to the fatherless and the oppressed you can do it.  Check out organizations like BrightPoint and Children’s HopeChest.  There is really no reason to ignore the fatherless, whether in Africa or your own backyard.

However, I must warn you.  Once you open up your heart to hear what is on God’s heart, your life cannot ever be the same again.  There is no telling what God will have you do.

My journey is now leading me back to Africa once more.  This time, Ethiopia, where God has a fatherless child that he has prepared for our home, to change our lives forever.  Read more over at Hipp is my middle name.

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Back to Liberia – For now

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Prayer for Moses

Those of you that are new to Seeking Above may not be familiar with Moses.  You can read more about him on these two posts:

• Meet Moses
• Update on Moses

God has answered our first prayer, as Moses’ surgery was successful.  The doctors cut a tendon from one part of his wrist and wrapped it around to the back of his wrist with the hope that he’ll have some use of his hand.  Moses was a real warrior, not taking much pain medicine and now is working hard on rehab.  The rehab is probably the most important part of the whole procedure.

We went through quite a few ups and downs with Moses living with us.  He’s a very proud 12-year old and we had some confrontations with boundaries.  At one point he told us he did not want to live with us anymore.  However, he eventually settled in, and I think like most young boys, he actually appreciates the boundaries (although he’ll never admit it).

About a month after the surgery he was ready to start physical therapy.  This includes three trips to the physical therapist each week and home exercises each night.  The trips to the therapist have proven to be a challenge, as we live out in the country and the clinic is in town.  While we have volunteers from the church to help take him on these therapy sessions, there is not an easy way for someone to pick him up or for us to get him to them.

To help with the therapy sessions we have asked if anyone else at the church wants to sponsor Moses for the rest of his stay here in the U.S.  We’ve had a few takers so he’ll be staying with other people here and there for the next six weeks.

For the last two weeks Moses has been staying with another family that lives in town.  However, he’s coming back to our place tomorrow.  Our family and he are anxious to get back together again.  He’ll be here a week and then spend a week with another family and then we’ll see what happens from there.

Moving around to different families may be the best thing for him for these last few weeks for more than just therapy reasons.  As expected, our family and Moses have developed some strong bonds and it’s going to be difficult on everyone when he has to go back to Liberia.  He calls me Dad and my wife Mom.

Obviously, the question is, why don’t we adopt Moses into our family.  Especially since we’ve already committed ourselves to international adoption.  There are two main reasons at this point.  One, we really do not want to alter the birth order of our children when we adopt.  Moses is older than all of our other kids.  I am especially concerned with displacing our oldest son as the oldest child.  This is an issue we keep in prayer.  The second issue is that Liberia is currently not processing new adoptions. This is a fickle issue with international adoptions so this could change anytime.

We’re tentatively scheduled to take Moses back to Liberia at the end of September.  I’ll be going with our head pastor and another brother from our church.  Moses is not excited at all about going back in September.  The original plans were to go back in October and he wants all the time here he can get.  He is very excited that I’ll be making the trip with him.

We have a few goals on this trip.  One of the guys going is an engineer.  He’s going to review a bid to build a government required fence (current bid is $15,000).  If we can’t get this fence built, the government will shut down the orphanage.  He will also be looking at their well and buildings to see what else can be done to improve things for the orphanage, school, and church.

I’m going because I have to go see, touch, and love on the kids in the orphanage.  God’s talking to my heart about the global poor.  I don’t know all that he wants me to do.  However, I do know that he wants me to go and see it in person.  In my own mind, what  I want to do is come back and fire up our church and anyone else that will listen to get out of their pews and into the real world.  I anxiously wait to see God’s plans.

Please pray:

• For Moses’ therapy to continue to strengthen his hand so that he can have a functioning left hand for the first time in his life
• For God to provide Moses a family – this is Moses’ deepest prayer
• For a new fence for the orphanage so that it does not lose its government license
• For our church as we seek to figure out a long-term strategy for supporting the orphanage, school and church in Liberia (we are looking into a sponsorship program so that church members can sponsor a child through a organization like Bright Point)
• For my family as we look at international adoptions and also that we hear God clearly if Moses does happen to be the child he has for us, regardless of birth order and Liberia adoption difficulties
• For the global poor and the global orphans, yes, those in our own country as well

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 26:13 (ESV)
¹³ then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments, nor have I forgotten them.

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Update on Moses

A couple of posts back I introduced everyone to Moses from Liberia (he’s the one on the left). Since that time things have changed a little bit around this story.

The Hand Center wanted to make sure that Moses’ visa could be extended before they performed any surgery. The most important part of his treatment will be the rehabilitation. If he could not stay in the U.S. long enough to do the rehab then it would not be worth doing the surgery.

God is working through this whole process. The visa was extended until November 2 which gives us plenty of time for the surgery and the needed rehabilitation.

The next big change in this story is that Moses has moved in with our family. He’ll be staying with us until his visa expires in November. My kids, as well as my wife and I, are very excited about being able to share our family with Moses for the next five months.

So far, the transition with Moses living with us has been extremely smooth. Moses gets along great with our other kids, although the four year old is still playing shy with him. However, Moses is up for the challenge. I think he’s made it one of his goals to win her over. It’s really pretty cute as he tries to get her attention and she hides her face (with the smirk that only the baby in the family can have).

I’m sure the next five months will be go by as fast as they always do. Before long it will be late October and we’ll be trying to figure out how we’re supposed to say good-bye to Moses.

Are we supposed to say good-bye?

It will be interesting to see what God has in mind.

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Meet Moses

Meet Moses. Moses is a thirteen year old boy from Liberia where he has been raised in an orphanage since he was three months old. His mother died when she was shot by rebels. When she was shot, she fell on top of Moses where he remained pinned for three days. As a result of this tragedy, Moses was orphaned and his left hand was severely crippled.

Our church, Fairfield Baptist, sponsors Moses’ orphanage in Liberia. By the grace of God, we were able to arrange for Moses to come to the United States to have his hand fixed. More details can be found on the Fairfield Baptist web site.

Moses is here for at least 60 days. I think the church is trying to get his visa extended because after the surgery it would be best if he could be here for more physical therapy.

My family has been blessed by being able to spend some quality time with Moses on his visit. We home school and Moses has gone with my wife and kids on field trips, met our home school group, and today he got to see all the kids dressed in their Renaissance costumes as part of the home school groups Renaissance festival.

Up until now, my family’s interaction with Moses has been while I am at work. However, today I got to pick him up on the way home. We had some friends over and enjoyed homemade chicken and beef enchiladas. The house was full of kids and you can tell Moses really enjoys the other children. He plays with the little kids and laughs and makes them laugh. After our neighbors left, I got to play a few rounds of Uno Attack and spend some quality time with Moses and my three older kids.

I finally had my turn at being blessed.

There are going to be a lot of tears in my house when Moses goes back to Liberia and the orphanage.

James 1:27 (ESV)
²⁷ Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

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